Power Regulation of Variable Speed Wind Turbines using Pitch Control based on Disturbance Observer

Most variable speed wind turbines have pitch control mechanisms and one of their objectives is to protect turbines when the wind speed is too high. By adjusting pitch angles of wind turbine, the inlet power and the torque developed by the turbine are regulated. In this paper, the difference between the real wind speed and its rated value is regarded as a disturbance, and a component called disturbance observer (DOB) is added to the pre-designed control loop. The additional DOB based controller estimates the disturbance and generates a compensating signal to suppress the effect of disturbance on the system. As a result, the stability and the performance of the closed loop system guaranteed by an outer-loop controller (designed for a nominal system without taking into account of disturbances) are approximately recovered in the steady state. Simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed control scheme.